There is something inexorable in the purpose of a maiden lady--perhaps
because she has no minor domestic troubles to distract her; and when you
have two maiden ladies working on the same problem, and both of them
possessed of wealth and unusual intelligence--!
They started by taking Martha to North East Harbor for the balance of the
summer, and then to keep her from going west in the fall, they engaged
her to teach them French that winter at quite a fabulous salary. They
also took her to Boston and bought her some of the prettiest dresses
imaginable; and the longer they knew her, the more they liked her; and
the more they liked her, the more they tried to enlist her sympathies in
behalf of poor Josiah--and the more they tried to throw their brother
into Martha's private company.
"Look here," he said one day, when his two sisters were pushing him too
hard. "What's all this excitement about Martha? Who is she, anyway?"
"Why, don't you know!" Cordelia sweetly asked him, and drawing a full
breath she added: "Martha--is--your--future--wife--"
If you had been there, you would have been pardoned for thinking that the
last of the Spencers had suddenly discovered that he was sitting upon a
remonstrative bee.
The two sisters smiled at him--rather nervously, it is true, but still
they kept their hands upon their brother's shoulders, as though they were
two nurses soothing a patient and saying: "There, now ... The-e-e-ere ...
Just be quiet and you'll feel better in a little while."
"Yes, dear," whispered Cordelia, her mouth ever so close to his ear.
"Your future wife--and the mother of your future children--"
"Nonsense, nonsense--" muttered Josiah, breaking away quite flustered.
"I'm--I'm too old--"
Almost speaking in concert they told him about Captain Abner Spencer who
had children until he was sixty, and Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the
third Josiah Spencer, who had a son proudly born to him in his
sixty-fourth year.
"And she's such a lovely girl," said Cordelia earnestly. "Patty and I are
quite in love with her ourselves--"
"And think what it would mean to your peace of mind to have another
son--"
"And what it would mean to Spencer & Son--!"
Josiah groaned at that. As a matter of fact he hadn't a chance to escape.
His two sisters had never allowed themselves to be courted, but they must
have had their private ideas of how such affairs should be conducted, for
they took Josiah in hand and put him through his paces with a speed which
can only be described as breathless.
Flowers, candy, books, jewellery, a ring, the ring--the two maiden
sisters lived a winter of such romance that they nearly bloomed into
youth again themselves; and whenever Josiah had the least misgiving about
a man of fifty-two marrying a girl of twenty-six, they whispered to him:
"Think what it will mean to Spencer & Son--" And whenever Martha showed
the least misgivings they whispered to her: "That's only his way, my
dear; you mustn't mind that." And once Cordelia added (while Patty nodded
her head): "Of course, there has to be a man at a wedding, but I want you
to feel that you would be marrying us, as much as you would be marrying
Josiah. You would be his wife, of course, but you would be our little
sister, too; and Patty and I would make you just as happy as we could--"
Later they were glad they had told her this.
It was a quiet wedding and for a time nothing happened; although if you
could have seen the two maiden sisters at church on a Sunday morning, you
would have noticed that after the benediction they seemed to be praying
very earnestly indeed--even as Sarah prayed in the temple so many years
ago. There was this curious difference, however: Sarah had prayed for
herself, but these two innocent spinsters were praying for another.
Then one morning, never to be forgotten, Martha thought to herself at the
breakfast table, "I'll tell them as soon as breakfast is over."
But she didn't.
She thought, "I'll take them into the garden and tell them there--"
But though she took them into the garden, somehow she couldn't tell them
there.
"As soon as we get back into the house," she said, "I'll tell them."
Even then the words didn't come, and Martha sat looking out of the window
so quietly and yet with such a look of mingled fear and pride and
exaltation on her face, that Cordelia suddenly seemed to divine it.
"Oh, Martha," she cried. "Do you--do you--do you really think--"
Miss Patty looked up, too--stricken breathless all in a moment--and
quicker than I can tell it, the three of them had their arms around each
other, and tears and smiles and kisses were blended--quite in the
immemorial manner.